Excerpt: Redemption

In the 1950s, the United States military began experimenting with improving the most basic piece of combat equipment — the human body. More agencies with initials were involved in different aspects of this research than any one person can recall and no one person, not even the president, was privy to all the research at any one time. The parameters of the research ranged from the simple: How much caffeine can the average soldier ingest without losing concentration and how long can he run on caffeine before sleep is a necessity? What is the effect of dosing an enemy’s water supply with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)? Is it better to wound an enemy soldier so that you tax the enemy’s resources caring for him than to kill the soldier outright? to the truly unconventional: using chemicals for mind and thought control, attempts to develop “psychic soldiers,” and some crude early attempts at genetic manipulation through radiation-induced mutation, drugs given to unborn fetuses, and selective breeding practices.
Many of these projects were offshoots of Nazi Germany’s research during WWII. While it was generally accepted that the degree of human testing employed by the Nazis was inhumane and deplorable, there was just enough data in some of those files to pique the interest of some elements within the U.S. government. A turf war over the Nazi experimental data began within and among the various branches of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and each branch started small, isolated sub-branches to compartmentalize the data and continue the research it felt was most promising. Unlike the Nazis though, the U.S. agencies independently and unanimously declared there would be no inhumane experiments conducted on unwitting subjects. Unless of course the effects would most likely not be harmful. Or it was absolutely necessary in the interests of national security. Or they could get away with it without anyone else finding out.